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Top 5 Free Website Builders for Small Business Owners & Entrepreneurs!

Kaushambi — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:51:00 +0000

An online presence – What was once considered to be amusing, has now become a necessity for all businesses and entrepreneurial setups. Even many individuals are setting up their own niche websites showcasing their talents, hobbies etc.

However, most of them are not aware how easy it is to create a good looking website. Infact, there are many easy to use free online website builders that can do a perfect job for you instead of spending your hard earned money on hiring website designers and web developers. You don’t need to be a computer genius to use these because they allow you to build your website through simple interfaces that even dummies can master.

Here are 5 free Website Builders that you should look at:

Wix

Wix is an online website builder that was released in 2008. One of the strong points of Wix that stands out is the ability to create cool flash websites in a matter of minutes. You don’t need to have a design degree to come up with cool design ideas because Wix will provide you readymade templates that can be edited and tailored to your requirements.

Add to this, the ability to create a mobile website, a Facebook page and a range of ecommerce functions, Wix definitely has earned its spot in our list of top 5 online website builders. Wix also offers hosting services and other premium plans that you can check out at Wix.com

Weebly

Weebly is definitely a player to reckon when it comes to building websites online. Weebly was ranked 4^th in Time Magazine’s list of 50 best websites in 2007. That was a long time back and Weebly has evolved further into a comprehensive website builder offering drag and drop features, preset themes and templates, an easy user interface and hosting services.

And for all you tech savvy users out there, Weebly also allows you to edit CSS and HTML of a site. Signing up is free and similar to other service providers, Weebly has premium plans that you can check out at Weebly.com

Webs

Little needs to be said about Webs because it has been functioning and evolving as a hosting service and now as a website building service since 2001. Webs offers the usual array of hosting and website building services plus some great apps, statistical data and analytics, mobile sites, themes and templates to suit virtually all segments of blogging, design portfolios and businesses.

Like most other website builders, a free subscription will mean that Webs will place their own ads or banners on your website. To check out the premium plans and other features on offer, visit Webs.com.

Moonfruit

The very moment you visit Moonfruit, you are greeted by a banner that says "Pick a design. Launch your site" This is extremely comforting for non technical users who want to get a website up and going without too much hassle. Moonfruit partners with the biggies of the online industry like Getty Images, iStockphoto, PayPal and many more to give users a power packed website building experience.

Based in London, Moonfruit also claims to be the number one hosting site in UK and a stunning figure of more than 4 million websites have been made on their platform. A simple user interface, great design options and tools, ability to publish for computer and mobile platforms, blogging and other top tools bring Moonfruit to our list of top 5 website builders. Check out what’s on offer and subscription details on Moonfruit.com.

Webnode

Webnode was launched in 2008 in a Czech and Slovakian version. By 2010, Webnode was functioning on 12 different language platforms and reportedly, had more than 2 million users. The layout of this online website builder is simple and clearly laid out. With themes that support personal websites, business websites and ecommerce portals, Webnode allows a classic drag and drop usability function and an array of gadgets and widgets.

Labeled as a "quick and dirty way to build a Website or blog, relatively painlessly" by a popular blogging portal, Webnode definitely scores when it comes to ease of use. To find out more about how you can make payment gateways, business statistics, innovative designs, professional outlook and much more simply a click away, check out Webnode.com.

So there you have it – 5 sites that will help you create a great online presence at nearly no cost. Website creation is not a tough job after all!

Amazon S3 now made simple to host static websites!

Arun Prabhudesai — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:59:47 +0000

Amazon S3 has always been looked upon as an uber cheap and efficient storage solution. But many consumers were not too happy with Amazon S3 services as it did not allow to host websites.

But, Amazon has taken a note of it and introduced a service that which makes hosting a static website a breeze and very very cost effective solution.

According to latest announcement by Amazon S3, now users can configure root of their websites (which was not possible till now). The new feature makes it easy to host static websites on Amazon S3.

Customers who are already using Amazon S3 to host images, video, and other content for their websites haven’t been able to effectively host their entire website on Amazon S3. That’s because even though customers can configure an Amazon S3 bucket as a website, users accessing the root of the website (e.g.http://trak.in) would see the list of objects in the Amazon S3 bucket instead of the website’s home page. Also, if an error occurred, users would see an Amazon S3 error message instead of a website specific error message. In response to customer requests, Amazon has added support for root and custom error documents to address these issues.

To get started, open the Amazon S3 Management Console, and follow these simple steps:

Right-click on your Amazon S3 bucket and open the Properties pane
Configure your root and error documents in the Website tab
Click Save

For more information on hosting your static website on Amazon S3, review the Amazon S3 Developer Guide or attend the Introduction to Amazon S3 Website Features webinar on February 24th.

I think this is a big announcement by Amazon, and something that other hosting services should be wary about…

What do you think?

Is Facebook Trying To Build The Next Yahoo Answers?

Ankit Agarwal — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:59:06 +0000

Social Networking turned a new leaf with the launch of Facebook. Facebook caused a paradigm shift in how Social networking sites were perceived and took the idea further to bring lots of sticky additions to its platform. From sticky games and tons of interactive applications, Facebook has almost up gobbled up its much older peer- Orkut.

The recent Open Graph project is a testimony to the fact that Facebook is much more than helping people discover peers/friends. Even with all the issues concerning privacy, Open Graph experiment seems to have picked up and people are now sharing stuff with the click of a button. No wonder industry experts are touting Facebook as a threat to Google what with Facebook’s explosive traffic and innovative advertisement platform

Apparently, Facebook is quietly building its very own version of Yahoo Answers or for that matter, Google’s recent acquisition Aardvark. Facebook is keeping it under wraps and is planning to leverage its huge user base to build a crowd sourced Question-Answer platform

In an appeal to interested users to become beta testers, Facebook is trying build a huge data depository of rich information with the contribution from its user base itself. As mentioned on it’s official page.

We at Facebook are preparing to launch a brand new product to the world. We think it will be as exciting as Facebook Photos and Facebook Events, but we need your help to make it great.

As a beta tester, your job will be to ask great questions and provide great answers about your favorite topics. Economics? Skydiving? Relationships? Mexican Restaurants? It’s up to you. You’ll be the first person outside of Facebook to use this product

The incentive for early users being an opportunity to be seen as an expert and also a trip to Facebook headquarters. The opportunities for Facebook are however endless

An extension/alternative to organic search :

A user generated database of relevant questions and answers about anything and everything under the sun. Throw in the Open Graph feature and the platform becomes a recommendation engine. With millions of active users, the relevancy and freshness of the platform become a bonus

Opportunities for Individuals/SME’s To Showcase Their Expertise :

Individuals and even SME’s could answer relevant questions and showcase subject matter expertise. This could very well create job opportunities for individuals and leads for businesses

The opportunities could be endless but a lot will depend on the execution. I have not been an avid user of Yahoo Answers but whatever little I have used it, the quality of answers is not satisfactory. Whether Facebook is able to maintain quality of information in a totally crowd sourced platform is something that will determine the success of the product

What do you think of this development from Facebook? Are they only trying to create the next big alternative to Yahoo Answers or there is more to the development than is visible?

Web Wednesday: India News Digest

Arun Prabhudesai — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:04:37 +0000

If you are new to Web Wednesday, here is a short explanation of what it is.

This will be the first edition of our Weekly News Digest of Web Wednesday and we start with a real Big story – The Google Chrome OS launch announcement

Google to launch its own Operating System (OS) – Is it going to be the next best thing?

Time will tell if the recently announced Google Chrome will be threat to Microsoft or not, but one thing is for sure – Microsoft will be watching every move that Google makes in this space with a Hawk’s eye.

And Why not, for the first time Google is now threatening their bread and butter business.

Since the time announcement has come about Google launching the O.S, the blogosphere has been going bonkers with it.

Excerpts from the announcement:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.

We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.

For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favourite web technologies.

Checkout what TechCrunch has to say about Google Chrome OS

There seems to be very less action happening on the India Webospehere and so I will concluding this edition of Web Wednesday with just one story (albeit a very important one)

Note: We are looking for guest authors for our subject-wise News Digest feature that we have launched recently. As a guest author, you can pick -up any one of the 6 days (Mon-Sat) to feature your posts. Do get in touch with us if you are interested. You can mail me arun AT trak.in or simply use the contact form